Is social media helping or harming your job search?

19th October 2018

Social recruiting uses social media profiles, blogs, and other internet sites to source and screen candidates. It’s fast becoming an attractively integrated HR and Marketing strategy that supports the recruitment process for businesses both large and small.

Although most employers use social resourcing to look for information that supports an applicant’s qualifications for the job, others look to identify and assess if the candidate has a professional online persona aligned with the company’s values. This involves searching for what other people are posting about the candidate across a variety of social media platforms and popular search engines.

According to a 2018 CareerBuilder survey, 70 per cent of employers use social media to screen candidates during the hiring process, and about one in five looks a for a reason not to hire a candidate.

What does this mean for you?

If you’re a job seeker, you should make your professional profiles visible online and ensure any information that could negatively impact your job search is made private or removed.

Just because you’re not actively in the jobs market doesn’t mean you can disregard what you post online. More than half of employers use social media sites to research current employees. Thirty-four per cent of employers have found content online that caused them to reprimand or fire an employee.

In both cases, it’s always best to consider the wider audience and possible implications before posting personal pictures or publically sharing complaints about your job on social media, forums or other internet sites.

What should you avoid?

For the vast majority of us, we enjoy the right of having freedom of expression, and the internet is an ideal place to demonstrate our attitudes for the activities, places, cultures we enjoy, and even our beliefs.

However, it’s reported that more than half of employers have found content on social media that caused them not to hire a candidate for an open role. Of those who decided not to make an offer to a candidate based on their social media profiles, the reasons included:

Provocative or inappropriate photographs, videos or information: 39%

Information about excessive drinking or using drugs: 38%

Discriminatory comments related to race, gender, religion: 32%

Negative comments about a previous company or fellow employee: 30%

Lied about qualifications: 27%

Poor communication skills: 27%

A link to criminal behaviour: 26%

Exposure of confidential information from a previous employer: 23%

Unprofessional screen name: 22%

Lied about an absence: 17%

Excessive posting: 17%

Perhaps you think the solution is to avoid social media altogether?

Well, that approach may cost you your dream job as more than half of employers won’t hire those without one. Fifty-seven per cent of employers are less likely to call a candidate in for an interview if they can’t find an online presence.

How do you build a professional online persona?

Cultivating a positive, engaging and professional presence online can lead to terrific rewards. Around than 4 in 10 employers have uncovered content on social networking sites that caused them to hire the candidate. Among the main reasons employers hired a candidate based on their social media profiles were that the candidate’s background information supported their professional qualifications, they demonstrated impressive communication skills, a professional image, and creativity.

If you want to kick-start your career or work towards a new goal, promoting your distinctive personal brand through social media is a powerful way to establish credibility and build your professional network.

For some people, managing a competitive social media presence is time-consuming and hard. ABCV Solutions offers a low cost, flexible, fixed price social media management solution tailored to meet your career objectives. We take away all of the stress of having to source continually, design and oversee daily postings, and through detailed research and analysis, we’re able to direct your profile to your target audience and turn your social media pages into a visible, vibrant, current and credible digital presence.

Whether it’s your Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram or Twitter profile, we’ll collaborate with you expand your sphere of influence in the right direction and leverage your unique personal brand to help you get noticed for the right reasons.

About the Author: Amelia Brooke is an internationally recognised CV Writer and a member of several prestigious career, training, and CV writing organisations including the Professional Association of Résumé Writer (PARW/CC) and a lifetime Associate of the Career Thought Leaders Consortium. Amelia has written hundreds of CVs and LinkedIn profiles for clients in the engineering and technology sectors and is supported by a dedicated team of social media managers and content writers.